Unconditional love, innocent mistakes, fierce protection, and pure joy are the best ways to define a pet – be it a dog, cat or anything from the animal kingdom. But these pure little souls are much more than what meets the eye. They have the ability to enhance our way of living and our relationships by just being themselves.
As humans, we have so much going on in our life that we forget how to give ourselves a break, maintain good relationships, and healthy lifestyles. Factors such as stress, work pressure, busy schedules, personal goals, and more affect our standard of living drastically and tuning us into nothing short of mindless robots. Losing a sense of time, communication, togetherness, and not being emotionally present for yourself, does not feel very good. Sometimes, all we need is someone to teach us that there is more to life than just the routine. Keep reading to decide why you should make a new addition to your family.
Pets Help with Depression, Stress, and Anxiety
For the longest time, it was believed that pets can help ease your stress and control your anxiety. However, as of late, animal-assisted therapy has become highly popular and is no longer limited just to severe mental health conditions. In fact, the use of animals as a form of mental relief has spread far and wide for various purposes. Service animals that are trained to help people, therapy dogs at airports to help passengers deal with jet lag, are but a few examples. However, having a pet at home comes with far too many benefits to count. Pets are not worried about your past or the future, they only care about you in the present. Owning a pet can help boost your self-confidence and reduce anxiety. In fact, cuddling a pet in times of an anxiety attack helps ease a person mental stress. Touching a cat or a dog is believed to calm people down as well as reduce blood pressure.
Healthy Companionship
Human beings crave attention. Whether we like to admit it or not, feeling important, wanted, and needed, makes us feel good. At the same time, having someone when you need them, helps maintain the balance. Pets often take on the role of a best friend. You are there for each other when needed. While our job as owners might seem menial, it means the whole world to them. So much that the slightest quiver in your voice could make them desperate to help you.
A study on the ‘propensity of dogs to rescue people in distress’ conducted by Joshua Van Bourg and Clive Wynne of Arizona State University, showed that pet dogs wanted to rescue their owners when in trouble. They assessed 60 pet dogs in a control test where their respective owners were placed in a box and were asked to act distressed and trapped. It was found that most of the dogs shared a desire to help their owners, and a third of the dogs actually managed to rescue them.
The most impressive part of this study, however, was the desire the pets showed in wanting help their owners and their understanding of the kind of help required. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, most dogs did not react out of obedience or incentive – in order to ensure this, the owners were asked not to call out their dog’s name.
To put this into perspective, in another control test just prior, when the dogs saw food being put in the box, only 19 out of the 60 dogs managed to open it. This means more dogs actually managed to open the box to help their owners than when compared to being incentivized by food. Moreover, the dogs were nowhere near as distressed when trying to get to the food as compared to when trying to save their owners. Clive Wynne says it best, “What’s fascinating about this study is that it shows that dogs really care about their people. Even without training, many dogs will try and rescue people who appear to be in distress – and when they fail, we can still see how upset they are. The results from the control tests indicate that dogs who fail to rescue their people are unable to understand what to do – it’s not because they don’t care.
You Become Responsible
When it comes to owning a pet, you learn to be selfless. You learn about the lifestyle of your pet and what it means to care for them. You feed them on time and take them outside. You want to get home early from work, and will probably avoid a night out, only to spend a night in with your best friend. While doing all of this, we often miss out on how much we learn to take care of ourselves in an effort to look after our pets.
Pets Help You Connect and Maintain Relationships
If you’ve ever been to a pet adoption centre or a veterinary clinic, you would notice how easily people get together and bond over their love for animals. Sometimes these bonds last longer than expected. Owning a pet boosts social communication. Our pets often act as a lubricant that eases communication. They are a common factor in uniting various people.
However, pets also strengthen existing relationships. They add structure to one’s life, one that is not boring. No matter what your mood is, when that little animal comes running towards you, your heart melts. Everyone in the house learns to smile by just watching the pet. Play time, outdoor walks, veterinary appointments, or even making TikTok videos as a family, pets just bring you together.
There are many ways in which pets can help boost your emotional, social, and personal state of mind. They teach you to be mindful, enjoy the present, and laugh every once in a while, if not always. While reading all this can only give you a small idea of what it means to own a pet, you never fully know until you have one.
If you have the time and the patience, there are many out there waiting to be adopted. Go ahead and take one home and you can rest assured that they will love you unconditionally, appreciate you till their very last breath, and change your life for the better!